'Congress has no moral authority to say it's wronged'

Union Minister of State for AYUSH Shripad Naik on Friday said that the Congress had no moral authority to claim that it had been wronged after what was done to then Gujarat Minister Vajubhai Vala in 1996.

In 1996, then Prime Minister H.D. Deve Gowda heading the United Democratic Front government at the Centre, recommended the dismissal of the BJP government led by Suresh Mehta in Gujarat even before it could prove its majority on the floor of the Assembly, due to which Vala lost his Ministry.

Naik said that similarly a Bharatiya Janata Party-led government in Goa was summarily dismissed by then Governor S.C. Jamir in 2004, despite it having a majority.

The Minister said that Goa Governor Mridula Sinha had not erred by inviting the BJP along with coalition partners to form the government in the coastal state after the 2017 Assembly elections.

"If they (Congress) were the largest party, they should have staked a claim and the Governor would have called them. They were the single-largest party... but they did not have a wish to form the government," Naik said.

Goa's Leader of Opposition and Congress MLA Chandrakant Kavlekar is scheduled to meet the Goa Governor on Friday to ask her to follow the precedent set by Vala in Karnataka and invite the Congress in Goa to form the government since it is the single-largest party in the Assembly.

Naik said that the Goa Congress was not a united force and that if the party were confident of a majority, it would have moved a no-confidence motion against the BJP-led coalition government.

--IANS

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